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Talk:Kill the Past
Killer Is Dead This was too long for the edit summary so I have to leave it here instead. Killer Is Dead probably isn't part of Kill the Past. Thematically it's close, but narratively it has a pretty small window where it would fit. Zappa's profile is dated "XX, XX. 2XXX A.D." so it happens sometime after 2000.KID In 2014, Matsuken's fate decides whether Japan or America is attacked.K7 His "kill him" epilogue goes as far as to say Japan is "destroyed" by the attack.K7 Regardless, in 2017 globalization occurs and "national barriers cease to exist."HIK7 In Killer Is Dead however, Mondo Zappa is a globetrotter who executes people in all sorts of countries. The menu text generalizes these locations ("East USA, Eurasia," etc.) however the setting of Hamada-Yama's fight is outed by the Reckless Riding side-mission to be in Kyoto, Japan.KID Kyoto is not one of the four cities devastated by missiles in 2010''HIK7'' so we can assume Kyoto is alive and well at this time, however if Matsuken is killed, Japan is obliterated in 2014 anyway.HIK7 This means for Killer Is Dead to work in the extended Hand in killer7 timeline, Mondo Zappa couldn't have gone to Kyoto anytime after 2014. It's possible that Killer Is Dead exists in a sub-version of Kill the Past implied by the world histories splitting in two based on sparing or killing Matsuoka, however that isn't plausible either because sparing Japan ensues in a worldwide Japanese rule. This is a problem because the cultures we observe in Killer Is Dead are pretty unfettered for a world where America or Japan has supposedly taken things over. Either way this game can't be placed beyond 2014 in the timeline. Furthermore, this part is speculative because it concerns something that didn't make it into the final game, but Zappa was intended to be on an Air Europe flight at the start of Killer Is Dead,TAOG98-15 however in 1998 air transportation was internationally banned to curb terrorism (and an "unknown virus").HID7 You could argue for a second that Bryan Execution Firm was shady enough to bend some rules regarding planes and flight, but... Zappa is flying Air Europe, not some clandestine private spy plane. This game just doesn't work with Kill the Past's dates. Disregarding the flight part since it isn't in the final game, it still has a small window of 2000-2014. We have nothing tangible to zone in on where exactly it takes place in that window. GrislyGrizzly (talk) 22:36, February 18, 2016 (UTC) Well, considering some of the details in killer7 conflict with those in The Silver Case and Flower, Sun, and Rain it's possible the final version of killer7 takes place in an alternate timeline to SC and FSR. Air travel and network stations are banned "in a short space of two years", yet in FSR Lospass Island is ostensibly continuing to operate as a tourist destination with an operating airport in 2001. hand in killer7 says private use of the internet was banned globally in 1998, yet the web is still being used by average citizens in SC (such as Tokio Morishima) in 1999. Always possible these are just oversights I guess, but it seems odd that they would go with a date that most definitely contradicts not incidental details, but major plot points in games supposedly set in the same universe. In any case, in the remote possibility that there are two KTP timelines, you could plausibly make the case that Killer Is Dead follows on from SC, FSR and 25 Ward, not killer7. Who knows, maybe Mondo and David are meant to be Shelter Children and Mondo has a silver eye. Or something. Assuming the entirety of Killer Is Dead isn't just an elaborate fantasy dreamt up by Zappa. It's probably much more likely that Killer Is Dead is just a KTP game in spirit, but not in universe, if that makes sense. Or perhaps the game was meant to have a much more concrete connection to the previous games when it was originally envisioned, but ended up having that element cut for whatever reason. Unless somebody asks suda himself, we'll probably never know. Gurney Slade (talk) 00:38, February 19, 2016 (UTC) :That does make sense. Your proposition that KID happens in a version of KtP that excludes killer7 is mind-blowing to me. As I said in the other section, I've never tried to seriously scrutinize the dates and shared connections to establish what exactly the shared universe(s) are. I previously looked at it as which games were and weren't KtP. I now believe the Kill the Past body and the shared universe body are completely separate categorizations, evidence by all the inconsistencies we've tossed out in this page already. I have one question about what you added to my argument on the ban of airlines though. I don't have a DS anymore so I can't verify this quickly, but do we know for sure that FSR takes place in 2001? The Lospass mentions a movie called 1979 which is dated 2000 (and Shiruba Jiken happens in 1999 and 2000, FSR being a sequel), so I know for sure that FSR happens at least in 2000, but I thought FSR played actual dates loosely. I don't mean to pry or anything but are you positive the year is 2001 in FSR? It's just been a few years for me and there have been so many GHM games since 2008 (I have it on both platforms but I only speak English so I played the DS version). GrislyGrizzly (talk) 21:37, February 19, 2016 (UTC) No More Heroes and the timeline I would weigh in on the above discussion, but I still have yet to play Killer Is Dead and form my theories on it, so I'm avoiding reading much of that for now. Until then, I'd like to say that No More Heroes already connected to killer7 without Diabolical Pitch's shout outs connecting it to FSR. Most importantly in the Lovikov Balls, each one holding a power related to a member of the killer7. Randall Lovikov even literally says that the balls contain peoples' souls, so it's definitely a connection. (there's also M.S. and Ermen but those are more ambiguous.) I see that the split in the timeline has been talked about above, in my opinion that's definite, not just speculation. Airplanes and internet being banned before the games about airplanes and the internet took place is very likely a deliberate decision. (Even if it's not, hey, it's published and therefore canon, the timeline has to be split.) One has to assume, also, that the killer7 and Heaven Smile end up being shut down before 1998 as well, as Harman and Kun Lan influenced Earth's politics a lot. So, one can deduce that the main KtP timeline is one in which Harman and Kun Lan's effects on the world were minimal. And somehow, it seems that this man, Randall Lovikov, was the one who came into possession of the Smith Syndicate's souls. Diabolical Pitch's linking helps as evidence but Michigan had already given the ZaKa TV link. Basically 1) DP's links are the third time that NMH has been linked to KtP, not the first and 2) the timeline split helps contextualize NMH and potentially KID into the world. If killer7's timeline was the canon one, then almost every KTP game wouldn't fit in the timeline at all, so we have to assume that it's a split. One more thing too, Kill the Past has always been more about the themes than the literal universe. The moon, assassins and detectives, the general storytelling style, video game culture and most of all, protagonists dealing with their past, are all much more important to what KtP is, than Edo Macalister showing up in one cutscene or whatever. Not saying that we should shove everything onto the KtP list, and not saying that the literal universe isn't interesting too because it is, but maybe we shouldn't be particularly worried about what counts as a KtP game or not through how they fit with eachother. -A :I forgot about the "souls" part of the Lovikov Balls. It's been a long time. I knew they referenced the Smiths though, I just forgot there were other implications. The ZaKa TV part I also knew about, but Travis breaks the fourth wall in that scene so my initial impression was that the ZaKa TV/Channel 51 watermark was only adding to the cutscene's self-awareness. Diabolical Pitch was the first time I saw Grasshopper literally acknowledge Santa Destroy and Lospass Island in the same breath. I do believe the Lovikov Balls count though. Again it just slipped my mind that they were suggested as anything more than a killer7 nod. I do stand by that DP is significant for finally plainly confirming the shared universe though. :Ever since we started tinkering with the Kill the Past article recently, I came to accept (as you added) that KtP's storyline was a philosophical one. Where NMH2 is literally a sequel, Shiruba Jiken, FSR and killer7 (and Hand in killer7 really) all have trouble adhering strictly to their established world history. They get away with it for the most part, but yeah the continuity breaks down in certain spots even before taking into account the newer games. The way I see it, "Kill the Past" itself did end with killer7 but may include Killer Is Dead (though Suda doesn't talk about KtP anymore to absolutely confirm it). Meanwhile, the shared universe extended beyond killer7 and that is the list of games this article has turned into. The thematic KtP is separate from the greater Grasshopper universe. :I've never started to really look at it from the larger universe angle until really recently. Since 2005, for me KtP has always been Shiruba Jiken, FSR and killer7, and that was when all I had to go on for the first two were forums where people who were bilingual had actually happened to play them and talk about it. But I've been really into placing all possible games into a working timeline and now that we're throwing divergent timelines on that table it's getting me really excited because we're all in agreeance that this must have happened yet Suda has never talked about it before. No one really has. This is what makes this website the ultimate Grasshopper encyclopedia. GrislyGrizzly (talk) 04:20, February 19, 2016 (UTC) ::Well, I actually have seen the "split timeline" thing mentioned before on killer7 SINdicate, but I've never seen anyone go far into, say, Diabolical Pitch's connections. So we definitely have gotten deeper here than those before, yes! -A killer7 I've had plenty of time tonight to think about what killer7 and Hand in killer7 mean to the timeline. Even if we don't count a single Grasshopper game released in the last ten years, as we've discussed here already, killer7 messes up Kill the Past's primary storyline (TSC/''FSR''/''k7'') despite being easily its most well known part. But I believe I may have arrived at the best possible moment where the timeline diverges, based on various sources and the shared elements from newer games. In my opinion, Gurney Slade is onto something by suggesting Killer Is Dead could fit into a storyline that excludes killer7. At first this was hard to swallow because it's such an important Grasshopper game, but things are starting to make so much more sense now. I believe the catalyst of the shared universe timeline is in 1990 when the Smith Syndicate is exterminated in France.HIK7 Garcian is the only persona who walks away from the ambush alive, and he spends the next 10 years resuscitating the incredibly damaged personae.HIK7 I strongly feel that the split in the timeline occurs if Garcian does not live to revive the Smiths. The Smiths' deaths are required to justify why the Smiths are contained by the Lovikov Balls when No More Heroes takes place. Garcian's death is also required despite what Hand in killer7 tells us, because among the Lovikov Balls is Garcian's Memory of Three. In killer7 we see that every persona can die in combat and be recovered except Garcian, whose death ends the game. So to reiterate, even though he is the only persona to survive the France ambush and spends ten years reviving the Smiths in published killer7 lore, the timeline actually diverges when Garcian dies before he can rebuild the Smith Syndicate. I think Gurney's suggestion that there is a timeline where killer7 doesn't occur is too extreme. It needs to have at least partially occurred in order to place the Smiths' memories and souls into the Lovikov Balls. This is where Hand in killer7 proves useful as hell in telling us the Smiths die in the early 90s, before the 1998 air transportation and Internet bans that render Tokio Morishima's following of the Silver Incident on his home computer''TSC'' and the major plot with Lospass Airport''FSR'' impossible. Travis also wins the Blood Berry in an online auction,NMH which also could not happen if public use of the Internet was banned. killer7 tells us hacker communities continue using it, but Travis is a guy who admittedly watches his VHS tapes until they wear out.NMH He's not tech-savvy. He has a VCR and an N64.NMH Based on Garcian's ability to rescue the fallen Smiths or die trying, I believe the possible timelines we're looking at are: Garcian revives Smiths: * Hand in killer7 begins in 1750 with the birth of Harman Deltahead. The second Smith Syndicate is nearly wiped out in December 1990 and Garcian is unable to revive the personae until 2000. During their hiatus, international legislation is passed in 1998 prohibiting public Internet use and air transportation in an effort to curb growing terror threats. In 2010, the Smiths investigate the "Celtic" Building and the events of the killer7 game take place, leading to the Smiths' deaths once more in 2011. This time, Garcian is dissolved by his birth identity, Emir Parkreiner, and in 2014 he sets out to kill Kenjiro Matsuoka and the Last Shot Smile. The book and game cover up to the year 2171. Garcian dies before reviving the Smiths: * Hand in killer7 begins in 1750 with the birth of Harman Deltahead. He becomes a prolific assassin and in 1775 his Multifoliate Personae Phenomenon occurs for the first time. This is also the year the first Smith Syndicate is formed. * In March 1979, the Silver Incident occurs in which Kamui Uehara commits a series of murders. The rest of the Shiruba Jiken timeline transpires. * In November 1990, the Felonious Department 2 was formed by Tetsuguro Kusabi and company. (The department's name varies. Don't shoot me! The game text calls it Felonious but Art of GhM had another name for it). * In December 1990, the last living Smith persona Garcian dies, abruptly ending all other Hand in killer7 events. Previously in 1973, Harman had to barter with Kun Lan as punishment for losing a game of chess. I feel that similarly, with the the Smiths' failure to survive the attack, this caused disharmony between the East and West that resulted in the upper hand for Kun Lan, where international laws were not altered to deter rising terrorism. * The Twilight Syndrome games happen but I don't know their dates. Then: * Beginning in October 1997, Mika Kishi and friends follow a string of murders in Moonlight Syndrome. * In January 1999, deranged Ryo Kazan fires gunshots at Tetsuguro Kusabi and is shot down at the Cauliflower Building. * The rest of Shiruba Jiken plays out between May 1999 and January 2000. Journalist Tokio Morishima researches the case over the Internet, which has not been banned in this timeline. * No earlier than 2000, FSR occurs. Detective Sumio Mondo must investigate a bomb threat at Lospass Airport, which is a security issue because as in the last point, air transportation is also not banned in this timeline. * In September or August 2007, No More Heroes takes place. This can be assumed based on Travis' calendar being flipped to the August and September pages and a bus stop advertisement being dated 2007. Once again, Travis wins a beam katana online because there is not an Internet prohibition in this continuity. The second Smith Syndicate only exist now in the fragmented forms of strange balls littered across Santa Destroy, California. * Three years pass, meaning No More Heroes 2 occurs in 2010. The Smiths have now been absent for nearly 20 years. This would be the year in the shorter timeline where the killer7 game begins. In contrast to the alternate timeline where assassins silently serve political parties (Kisugi, dePaul, the Smiths) or their own rogue agendas (Blackburn), assassination is now a glorified commodity. UAA combat is broadcasted as a spectator sport and Santa Destroy's beacon for killers enables it to explode as a supercity in only three years. * Diabolical Pitch likely occurs after No More Heroes 2. I believe this because McAllister uses a laptop to research Queen Christine's Dreamland, and the team he plays for is the Santa Destroy Red Tigers, who go on to the baseball world championship series. Santa Destroy's baseball team in the first No More Heroes is the Santa Destroy Warriors, whom only lead in "violence toward its fans." I feel that when Pizza Bat commercialized the city, they got their act together and replaced the Warriors with the competent Red Tigers. * Killer Is Dead might fit but it still has no tangible connections to people or events in the neighborhood of other games in this list, nor has Suda come out and said it's a KtP game, though I agree that it still is in spirit. Still, by removing killer7 from the greater shared universe, Killer Is Dead no longer becomes restrained to the 2000-2014 window I described above. It could occur anytime after 2000 (again, Zappa's 2XXX A.D. profile date). It's too bad we don't have more leads to go on. Anyway this is probably enormous. I hope it's not too hard to follow. My point is that removing killer7 but including the Hand in killer7 events leading up to the known death of the Syndicate in the 90s, before the immersion-breaking laws passed in its world of 1998, changes the entire timeline to make complete sense... assuming I haven't lost you guys haha. To read this back to you and make a long story short, Hand in killer7 is the origin point for the shared universe theory. It establishes the life and death of the Smiths. It tells us there is a very small window of 10 years where they are essentially obliterated. While Garcian is reviving the personae, the world passes laws that retcon everyday things we see in TSC, FSR, NMH, NMH2 and possibly DP and KID (for the last time, if KID is connected is extremely debatable but one can hope). This means that if Garcian falls as well sometime before 1998, the East and West fall out of balance when Harman is cancelled out. Counter-terrorism measures are not taken against Kun Lan, and the world does not enter an "age of peace." Airports and the public Internet remain open and TSC and FSR play out naturally. With the Smiths dead, their souls emerge in Santa Destroy years later, manifested by Lovikov Balls. NMH1 and NMH2 then play out as well. Assassination is now a vainglorious spectacle rather than a silent professional tool employed by political bodies. If KID is part of the continuity, this suggests Bryan Execution Firm is a cross between the old ways and the new, where you can essentially walk into the office and pay Bryan Roses to have somebody killed. It goes with the commercialism of the UAA we see by the time of NMH2. GrislyGrizzly (talk) 16:21, February 20, 2016 (UTC) :This is all really good analysis, especially the contrast between NMH2 and killer7, as them taking place at the same time is something I've wondered about myself and you've provided a really good connection of why this is. I think if Ermen Palmer means anything at all besides a reference, a timeline such as this would make a lot of sense, since if Garcian (Emir) was dead then maybe Ermen could be a reincarnation of some kind. There are also other ways that the Smith Syndicate could be taken out of the picture, for example if Emir didn't kill himself on the roof of the Union many years beforehand, and succeeded in putting down Harman, and then got taken down by the government as revenge, that would be another potential point of divergence usable if this point gets contradicted by anything, though I doubt it will be. Also, thinking back on it I think maybe Lovikov didn't specify that the balls themselves had the souls but just that he was passing along souls - maybe the Smiths were in him but he needed the balls to pass them on. Again, either this OR them being in the balls could be feasible explanations, just mentioning possible alternatives that hold things up even more. -A ::Emir not killing himself is tricky though. The second Smith Syndicate (the game's Smiths) doesn't exist until two years after the Union Hotel murders of 1955. At the time Emir climbs to the Union rooftop, Harman Smith (the né Deltahead version) is also dead. Emir is assimilated by the separated young version of Harman Smith, after which Harman Smith/Deltahead and Kun Lan are resurrected. Both had been dead since 1820. Smith/Deltahead forms the second Smith Syndicate in 1957 using seven personae, but we don't know who all of these initial people were because, for example, Dan Smith is not assimilated until his death in 1975. Before I ramble too much, Young Harman Smith's assimilation of Emir Parkreiner is the catalyst for Harman Deltahead's revival and the formation of the Smiths we see in the killer7 game. For the shared universe theory to work, the Smiths need to be collected and subsequently killed before the international laws are amended, and Emir's death is responsible for making their formation possible in the first place. ::I mean at the end of the day, the shared universe is the result of incredibly wishful thinking and I accept that. The thing is that Grasshopper has left enough throwbacks with each new game that they probably never realized they were growing a cohesive universe. It's a little bit of an issue because as fans we're left with trying to rationalize the world they keep adding to without explanation. Diabolical Pitch is a good example because it references Santa Destroy and Lospass, when Lospass hasn't been discussed since 2001. Something I noticed which again lends itself to wishful thinking is that if No More Heroes takes place in a timeline where killer7 doesn't transpire, it's interesting because when the game was announced it was originally called Heroes. Suda had the opportunity to call it Heroes but he eventually chose to call it No More Heroes. In the theory, the Smiths have been dead since late 1990. They saved the world many times and you could say they were heroes. In this timeline though, their story is never told because Garcian failed to resuscitate them. Counter-terrorism didn't happen and the world got a little wild with stylish assassins doing as they pleased. In this timeline, there are essentially no more heroes, and NMH takes place at a point in the SC/''FSR''/''NMH''/''DP'' timeline where we begin to really see that. Even McAllister sabotaged a hospitalized child's baseball hero's home run streak because the game was being rigged somewhat for the child's benefit. McAllister justifies that it wouldn't have counted if the home runs weren't all completely legitimate, but at the end of the day the child's hero broke his promise because McAllister would not cooperate. GrislyGrizzly (talk) 06:06, February 22, 2016 (UTC) :::I've actually noticed something interesting about the fork in the proposed timelines that I thought I would add. It is possible that with killer7 negating TSC and FSR, and by proxy the Syndrome games preceding TSC, Mithra's death at the hands of Ryo Kazan was thwarted. This explains why he is able to manifest himself to the Smiths in the Dominican Republic 14 years after Moonlight Syndrome is set. The events of Suda's Syndrome trilogy likely still transpire somewhat in the domino effect of the Smiths Live timeline, but the students' battle against Mithra's syndromes is likely much less fruitful since he shows up alive and well much later. GrislyGrizzly (talk) 03:55, February 25, 2016 (UTC) ::::Something else I thought I would add. I already wrote this in my own personal notes but I wanted to share it with you guys just to flesh out the No More Heroes timeline. In the beginning of the No More Loser comic, we see Helter-Skelter meeting with his brother. The story suggests they've been meeting once per year on this day for a number of years now. At this time, Travis is shown in another panel bidding on the Blood Berry auction. A year passes and Helter-Skelter tells Vincent he will meet with him shortly, before the fateful battle with Travis which we all know he loses. Three years pass and Vincent has become Skelter Helter, ranked 51 on the UAA leaderboard. With No More Heroes taking place in 2007 (see above), we can place the earlier moments of No More Loser to 2006. We can also gather from the comic that, since Travis bids for his Blood Berry around this time, he actually possessed a beam katana for a whole year before Sylvia approached him about becoming the top-ranked killer. It begs the question of what Travis was up to in the entire year preceding the events of No More Heroes. Helpfully though, it could explain why Travis put up such a fight against Helter-Skelter in the Heroes trailer, for his first match with a ranked assassin. It seems likely that he spent that year brushing up on his laserswordsmanship. GrislyGrizzly (talk) 20:28, February 25, 2016 (UTC)